BYU Cougars

BYU football: 3 things to know for BYU vs West Virginia

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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The BYU football team is coming off a less-than-stellar performance in its home opener last week. Now the 1-2 Cougars are looking to rebound. But they’ll have to escape FedEx Field with a win over Dana Holgorsen’s West Virginia Mountaineers on Saturday. Here are three things to know for BYU vs WVU. 

The Cougars and Mountaineers will kickoff at 3:30 p.m. EDT on Saturday, Sept. 24. The game will be played at FedEx Field (the home of the Washington Redskins) in Maryland. It can be viewed on ESPN2. Many are viewing the game as a potential Big 12 audition for BYU football. It is a game with a number of question marks surrounding it, but none is bigger or more pressing than:

Will BYU football be able to score on West Virginia?

The BYU offense is… stagnant. And that’s the kindest way to put it. The Cougars look completely inept when it comes to moving the football.

We can toss the Utah game out. The Utes have one of the best defenses in the nation and those rivalry games are typically low-scoring dogfights. But Arizona? UCLA? Those two teams didn’t have incredible defensive units.

Rather, BYU was just bad. The Bruins had allowed 189 rushing yards per game coming into Provo. BYU mustered just 23.

UNLV scored 21 points against UCLA in Week Two. The Cougars barely put up 14.

West Virginia is coming off a bye week, so the Mountaineers will likely prepared for the vanilla Cougar offense. WVU is allowing 16 points per game this season, after defeating Missouri and Youngstown State.

The Mountaineers did lose eight defensive players to graduation, but they’re doing a good job of bending but not breaking.

Also, WVU isn’t great at generating pressure. But neither was UCLA and BYU allowed four first-half sacks. The offensive line will need to improve, but there may be a way to mask their inadequacies (we’ll get to that in a bit).

But if the Cougars hope to break the 20-point mark for the first time this season, I think they’ll have to…

BYU football has to move on from Taysom Hill

(Jeff Swinger-USA TODAY Sports)

This one tends to make people upset.

I get it. People love him. He came back to Provo. He hurdled that guy from Texas once and it was pretty neat. He’s a smart guy. He’s come back from injury after injury. He is a self-proclaimed “BYU guy.”

But he’s not as good as his backup.

Hill was given the starting nod for two reasons: his age/maturity and his athleticism.

Well, now the athleticism is gone. He can’t get the edge on defenders like he used to. He appears to be running tentatively – so perhaps he’s afraid of getting injured again.

He’s been under pressure for a lot of his throws, but he’s struggling to put touch on his passes. Whether he’s throwing an eight-yard curl or a 12-yard in route, he slings the ball in at 100 mph. There’s no touch on his passes. It’s as if he doesn’t understand route depth half the time.

He doesn’t throw receivers open. Then he sits in a post-game presser and says the receivers couldn’t get off press man coverage. This is partially true, but Hill was also afraid to throw the ball as the receiver is coming out of his break. He wanted to wait until they were more open.

He doesn’t set his feet well in the pocket. Sure, he’s been under pressure. But when there is a good pocket forming, he still gets happy feet. Three-step drops with Hill are more like four-step drops with some dancing thrown in.

Enter Tanner Mangum.

Last season, Mangum excelled at throwing receivers open. He was comfortable stepping up in the pocket, regardless of situation and he understood routes and when to throw the ball.

There was no hesitancy. It was all action. And the results were there.

If Detmer decides to roll with Mangum, there’s no going back. You can’t have a Jake Heaps–Riley Nelson 2.0 situation happening. Head coach Kalani Sitake reaffirmed on Monday that Hill is the guy, but it’s time. Six touchdowns in 12 quarters just isn’t going to cut it. One has to think Hill’s leash is shorter than it ever was before.

Thankfully, the Cougars won’t need much more than that, because…

Butch Pau’u is going to be a superstar for BYU football

There were concerns that, with all the position changes and the schematic shift, the BYU defense would struggle.

Wrong.

UCLA is the best offense the Cougars have faced on the young season, and Ilaisa Tuiaki’s defense held the Bruins to 17 points. The Mountaineer offense is more explosive than UCLA’s, so the Cougars will be facing another test. But I really don’t think that any team will score more than 28 on BYU this season. The defense is too good.

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A big reason for that?

Sophomore linebacker Butch Pau’u.

Pau’u was just a three-star recruit when he signed his Letter of Intent to play at BYU in 2011. He redshirted in 2012, played in eight games in 2015 and collected eight tackles.

Through three games in 2016 Pau’u has 37 total tackles (22 solo). He’s anchoring a BYU defense with a number of play makers. Everyone expected big things from Fred Warner and Kai Nacua, but Pau’u was a question mark.

Maybe now he’s an exclamation point. Or, perhaps a period. Because he ends things. Just ask this Utah wide receiver that tried to crack block him.

The BYU football team takes on West Virginia on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. MDT. The Mountaineers are six-point favorites.

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